WASHINGTON, Jan 17: US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is considering deploying as many as four additional US aircraft carriers to the Persian Gulf in the next phase of a massive US buildup, a defence official said on Thursday.

The carriers were part of a raft of new deployment orders before the secretary, the official said, adding that Rumsfeld could delay a decision.

“It’s on his table,” the official said.

A second US defence official said Rumsfeld was reviewing a series of new deployment orders that could include the carriers, but had not signed any yet.

The aircraft carrier USS Constellation is now in the Gulf, and the carrier USS Harry Truman is in the eastern Mediterranean.

But the US navy has ordered the USS Abraham Lincoln to stay put in the western Pacific and has put two other aircraft carriers, the USS Kitty Hawk in Japan and the USS George Washington on the US East Coast, on alert to deploy within five days. The USS Theodore Roosevelt is training in the Caribbean.

Massing that many aircraft carrier battle groups in the Gulf region would give US forces the air and naval firepower needed for a major offensive against Iraq, according to analysts.

Rumsfeld may opt not to deploy them all at once, parcelling them out instead to ratchet up the pressure on Iraq.

Each carrier has as many as 85 aircraft, including squadrons of F-18 fighters, F-14 fighters and EA-6B electronic jamming planes.

Additionally the carriers travel with other warships, including guided missile cruisers, destroyers, frigates and submarines, many of them equipped to fire Tomahawk cruise missiles.

US amphibious tasks forces, each with two helicopter carriers and thousands of Marines, have been leaving from the US east and west coast as part a massive buildup of military forces in the region.

Rumsfeld signed deployment orders a week ago to send 62,000 troops to the region over the next several weeks, which will raise the total force levels to more than 150,000.

The United States this week formally requested NATO support in the event of war with Iraq.

Some 800 US Marines have deployed in Israel with Patriot anti-missile batteries for an exercise, Pentagon officials confirmed.—AFP